Sometimes you just need to watch something awful. Shut down your brain. Let the recycled plots, banal dialogue and bad acting wash over you. Maybe even mock it madly, MST3K-style.
What you need is Matt Houston. The first season of ABC's 1982-85 private eye romp arrives on DVD this week as the ne plus ultra of the Aaron Spelling school of celeb-stuffed cheese.
Here it is in a nutshell: Mustachioed wisecracker Lee Horsley channels Smokey and the Bandit-era Burt Reynolds, playing a Texas oil gazillionaire moved to Hollywood to solve murders among his famous friends. He flies his own helicopter from his rodeo ranch, maintained by two dim-witted buckaroo buddies, to his in-town penthouse, replete with roof landing pad, living room hot tub, and a "state of the art" computer named Baby, employed as a fancy-schmancy slide projector to eyeball suspects.
Acting as sidekick is his big-hair babe Ivy League lawyer, played by Pamela Hensley with the kind of flouncy walk, hands-on-hips poses and linebacker shoulder pads that bring to mind nothing so much as a 1980s female impersonator. (Long live Divine!) Then there's George Wyner's nerdy in-house accountant-in-a-tizzy. And put-upon police pal John Aprea, whose oh-a-so-a-Italian mama runs a tacky restaurant that's Matt's home away from home.
In other words, Spelling & Co. regurgitate every cliche, stereotype, predictable plot and hackneyed line of dialogue they've ever encountered. Then they add sledgehammer musical/editing punctuation. Despite the clear implication that cute-named Houston operates in a glamorous world -- why, he drives a Luxxor! -- the sets are cheap, the costumes are tacky, and even Horsley's smirky jocularity feels cut-rate.
I mean, just look at his face in the photo. Don't you want to slap it?
And yet -- I can't stop watching. Set against today's TV dramas with all their would-be authenticity, Matt Houston's double knit polyester approach is mesmerizing. The plots don't even try to convey depth of character, and there's no textured B or C story, just the unbroken A-line of Matt following obvious leads in L.A.-L.A. Land. Thus does "eye candy" producer Spelling parade his latest Love Boat-ish guest list of old-time and not-quite-yet celebs with nothing better to do (Janet Leigh, Cesar Romero, Jill St. John, Sid Caesar, Troy Donahue, Sonny Bono and Zsa Zsa Gabor among the former; Heather Locklear and Tori Spelling among the latter).
And let's not forget all of his TV era's requisite bullet-dodging, random explosions, car/copter chases and other superfluous "action."
Matt Houston is so glossy and so stupid, it sometimes occurs to me this show might actually be arch self-parody.
And then I think, nah. That requires smarts. And if there's one thing Matt Houston ain't, it's smart.
Also out this week:
Scarecrow and Mrs. King: First Season -- By comparison, this is '80s sleuthing Shakespeare, pairing spy Bruce Boxleitner with dizzy housewife Kate Jackson.
Poldark -- Frankly, my dear, Robin Ellis doesn't give a damn as a British soldier returned from the American Revolution to all sorts of family/finance/romance adventure. Viewers of '70s Masterpiece Theatre loved the lush lust and period atmosphere.
Dalziel and Pascoe: Season One -- Hardboiled older cop and modern young partner play odd-couple investigators in well-sketched '90s Yorkshire.
The Beiderbecke Connection -- Britain's witty jazz-scored mystery/romance trilogy concludes: In this 1988 tale, teachers (and new parents) Jill and Trevor are asked to take in a mysterious refugee.